Under Two Flags eBook

There were before them death, deprivation, long days
of famine, long days of drought and thirst; parching,
sun-baked roads; bitter, chilly nights; fiery furnace-blasts
of sirocco; killing, pitiless, northern winds; hunger,
only sharpened by a snatch of raw meat or a handful
of maize; and the probabilities, ten to one, of being
thrust under the sand to rot, or left to have their
skeletons picked clean by the vultures. But what
of that! There were also the wild delight of combat,
the freedom of lawless warfare, the joy of deep strokes
thrust home, the chance of plunder, of wine-skins,
of cattle, of women; above all, that lust for slaughter
which burns so deep down in the hidden souls of men
and gives them such brotherhood with wolf and vulture
and tiger, when once its flame bursts forth.

That evening, at the Villa Aioussa, there gathered
a courtly assembly, of much higher rank than Algiers
can commonly afford, because many of station as lofty
as her own had been drawn thither to follow her to
what the Princesse Corona called her banishment—­an
endurable banishment enough under those azure skies,
in that clear, elastic air, and with that charming
“bonbonniere” in which to dwell, yet still
a banishment to the reigning beauty of Paris, to one
who had the habits and the commands of a wholly undisputed
sovereignty in the royal splendor of her womanhood.

There was a variety of distractions to prevent ennui;
there were half a dozen clever Paris actors playing
the airiest of vaudevilles in the Bijou theater beyond
the drawing-rooms; there were some celebrated Italian
singers whom an Imperial Prince had brought over in
his yacht; there was the best music; there was wit
as well as homage whispered in her ear. Yet she
was not altogether amused; she was a little touched
with ennui.

“Those men are very stupid. They have not
half the talent of that soldier!” she thought
once, turning from a Peer of France, an Austrian Archduke,
and a Russian diplomatist. And she smiled a little,
furling her fan and musing on the horror that the
triad of fashionable conquerors near her would feel
if they knew that she thought them duller than an
African lascar!

But they only told her things of which she had been
long weary, specially of her own beauty; he had told
her of things totally unknown to her—­things
real, terrible, vivid, strong, sorrowful—­strong
as life, sorrowful as death.

“Chateauroy and his Chasseurs have an order
de route,” a voice was saying, that moment,
behind her chair.

“Indeed?” said another. “The
Black Hawk is never so happy as when unhooded.
When do they go?”

“To-morrow. At dawn.”

“There is always fighting here, I suppose?”

“Oh, yes! The losses in men are immense;
only the journals would get a communique, or worse,
if they ventured to say so in France. How delicious
La Doche is! She comes in again with the next
scene.”

The Princesse Corona listened; and her attention wandered
farther from the Archduke, the Peer, and the diplomatist,
as from the Vaudeville. She did not find Mme.
Doche very charming; and she was absorbed for a time
looking at the miniatures on her fan.